College Choice: Students have range of options if they missed entry requirements

An alternative option for students who have failed to meet entry requirements for their chosen courses may be to apply to their local further education (FE) college. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

From early morning, yesterday the queries poured into the Irish Times helpdesk, where our team of guidance counsellors answered questions in our live blog.

Many readers who contacted the team of guidance counsellors were unsure whether they could include the new H7 (39-30 per cent) grade in their points calculation.

Their answer is they can, if it is among their best six grades. It’s worth a total of 37 CAO points .

In the case of those who sat the Leaving Cert in previous years and are now calculating their CAO score for the purposes of next Monday’s offers, a score of 33 CAO points applies to all E grades under the old system.

(The justification for the lesser points score is because an E grade under the previous system applied to a grade between 39-25 as opposed to the new H7 10 per cent band).

The largest group of disappointed students seeking our support were some of the 3,000-plus who had failed to secure 40 per cent on the ordinary level maths paper. This excludes them from consideration by many colleges, who require this grade as a minimum entry requirement for most of their courses.

If they consider it worthwhile, they may then apply to have their exam scripts remarked at a cost of €40

Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to their dilemma. In a small number of colleges, special maths exams are been offered to ordinary level students in the coming days, to those who failed to meet the required grade yesterday (see details below).

Review scripts

These students, along with thousands of others who are unhappy with a grade they secured in the Leaving Cert, can also review their scripts on the weekend Friday August 31st-Saturday September 1st. They must be present to view scripts.

Gallery

If they are upgraded (which about 20 per cent are each year) they will be retrospectively offered a place on the course.

As many courses are half-way through the first term of lectures by this stage, many students who are successful choose to defer their place into 2019.

You can combine Leaving Certificates for the purposes of meeting course entry requirements, but not for points

An alternative option for students who have failed to meet entry requirements for their chosen courses may be to apply to their local further education (FE) college to study a programme in their area of career interest. This may also bypass the need to repeat the paper in 2019.

They might also consider registering with the State Examinations Commission in the autumn to sit the subject again in June 2019 and prepare for it alongside whatever else they choose to do this year.

You can combine Leaving Certificates for the purposes of meeting course entry requirements, but not for points.

Admission

There is a further group of students who have not failed maths, but who have not met the entry requirements for admission to a range of engineering and other programmes.

These colleges are offering special maths exams to enable these students to have a second attempt to meet the required higher-level grade. To book a place on any of these courses contact the colleges directly today. They include:

Waterford IT (August 24th): This exam is open to any CAO applicant to a WIT programme which requires maths.

* The Irish Times helpdesk will operate at irishtimes.com/results2018 on weekdays from 9am over the period from the release of the Leaving Cert results until after the CAO offers are released on August 20th.

Brian Mooney’s column will appear on weekdays until the end of next week